Yesterday I posted about the uptick in traffic and searches related to coupons during this holiday season, but I would be remiss not to give special attention to one of the most popular online promotions of all – free shipping. Why does free shipping outshine the majority of promotions offered each year by online retailers? This is mostly due to the fact that free shipping can eliminate the potential price difference between a purchase online and in-store. Avoiding potential ‘sticker shock’ during the final check-out can help all retailers stave off some shopping cart abandonment, especially for online-only players that do not offer a physical store location as an alternate point-of-purchase.
Consumers love free shipping and seek out the promotion if it isn’t already appearing in their inboxes from the retailers themselves. The share of variations for ‘free shipping’ during this holiday season has increased, with a higher number of search terms that include ‘free shipping’ in the query. The peak to date occurred during the week ending Dec. 6, 2008, which included Cyber Monday, where there were 954 variations, up 43% from the corresponding week last year. Last week there was an increase of 47% of queries to include ‘free shipping’ and an increase of 31% during the week of Thanksgiving from the previous year.

The top website to receive traffic from the search term ‘free shipping’ is Freeshipping.org (smart name, search-referred traffic is 100% organic), an aggregator of free shipping deals from participating merchants. The website also happens to be sponsoring Free Shipping Day today as we get closer to the deadlines to get packages in time for gift giving next week, so if you don’t want to hit the stores, it might be a good time for some online shopping (after work of course).